How To Distinguish "Republicans" and "Prominent Republicans"

Apparently, we are all supposed to applaud Republicans again for their belated discovery of the existence of gravity and the fact that water is, indeed, wet. The New York Times has a story about how 75 "prominent Republicans" — most of whom, as we shall see, are not necessarily "prominent" among Republicans — have signed onto an amicus brief supporting marriage equality at the behest of Ted Olson, who is arguing in favor of it in front of the Supreme Court just as earnestly as he once argued the Bush side that produced Bush v. Gore, and just as enthusiastically as he once helped folks to pursue the various theories regarding the activities of the Clintons during their days in darkest Arkansas.

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(No, in fact, I am not over any of it. Why do you ask?)

Today, I am intrigued by the list of "prominent Republicans" who have signed the brief because to study the list is to get a quick lesson in how to distinguish "Republicans who are prominent" from "prominent Republicans." The signatories are a case study in the former.

Among them are Meg Whitman, who supported Proposition 8 when she ran for California governor; Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Richard Hanna of New York; Stephen J. Hadley, a Bush national security adviser; Carlos Gutierrez, a commerce secretary to Mr. Bush; James B. Comey, a top Bush Justice Department official; David A. Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's first budget director; and Deborah Pryce, a former member of the House Republican leadership from Ohio who is retired from Congress.

Also:

Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former Utah governor, who favored civil unions but opposed same-sex marriage during his 2012 presidential bid, also signed. Last week, Mr. Huntsman announced his new position in an article titled "Marriage Equality Is a Conservative Cause," a sign that the 2016 Republican presidential candidates could be divided on the issue for the first time.

Also, too:

But the presence of so many well-known former officials - including Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey, and William Weld and Jane Swift, both former governors of Massachusetts...

Seriously, is there one person on that list of serious influence in the Republican party, and it's not Huntsman, god knows, who is a person of serious influence only in the Republican party that exists in the heads of the people in various green rooms. Bill Weld, god love him, has been out of public life since 1996 and Jane Swift wasn't a "well-known" Republican in Massachusetts even when she was governor. Christine Todd Whitman is an influential Republican? Since when? You might as well be talking about William Seward.

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It is devoutly to be hoped that this brief will do what people keep saying it will do, which is to change a mind or two on the Supreme Court, but even that's something of a longshot. Among the folks whose minds need the most changing, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito are all creatures of the Republican party that defenestrated the likes of Huntsman long ago. It's hard to see their positions changing because they are assailed by the mightly moral force of former Bush Administration torture-sophistStephen Hadley. Roberts is a possibility, I guess, although I think he may have gone to ground a bit after his opinion on the Affordable Care Act. And, who knows, it may be enough hot air to propel the weathervane that is Anthony Kennedy in the right direction.

But the coverage of the brief is more interesting than the brief itself because it is another item in the continuing attempt by the elite political media to find a sane Republican party out there somewhere, struggling to be born. Jon Huntsman changes his mind on marriage equality! Chris Christie is Not Invited to CPAC! (Of course, a real sign of Republican reform would be if influential Republicans en masse decided to reject invitations to share the podium with the likes of Allen West.) The Very Fact Of Marco Rubio! The ringworm in the whole business is to be found deep in the bowels of the Times story, right after they summon up the shade of Jane Swift.

"...suggests that once Republicans are out of public life they feel freer to speak out against the party's official platform, which calls for amending the Constitution to define marriage as "the union of one man and one woman."

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No duh, as the kidz say. You can support marriage equality as a Republican as long as you're not presently running for office as a Republican, which rather mitigates against your being able to change the nature of a political party, the putative job of which is to elect people to office in order to carry out certain policies. There was another little bit of this when Lindsey Graham took to CNNand said that he was "willing to raise revenue. I'm willing to raise $600 billion in new revenue, if my Democratic friends would be willing to reform entitlements and we can fix sequestration together, because if you don't think it's that bad, why don't you come up with your own plan?"

Leave aside for a moment the fact that we all know what a Republican means by "reform entitlements," the word "entitlement" itself being the primary tell. The simple fact is that Graham doesn't have the power to make this happen, and he knows it. Moreover, if he were seriously to propose actual revenue increases — and not the easily reversible closing of various "loopholes" — some state representative from East Jesus would get up, announce his intention to run in a primary, and Huckleberry would lock himself in the chiffarobe within seconds. He knows it. The other Republicans know it. All the Democrats know it. The only ones who don't know it seem to belong to the Centrist Cargo Cult and the other feeders of Vaal within the Beltway. This endless and futile search for reasonable Republicans with the power to enforce reason on the rest of the party is the biggest barrier to a general understanding of what's gone badly wrong with our politics over the past two decades. It's also a large part itself of what's gone wrong. It may be horrible to contemplate, but John Roberts may be the only one left.

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Oh, and in a related development, bag of skin named Tom Marino, whom some people in Pennsylvania elected to Congress because he would no longer be in their neighborhoods, howling at the moon and keeping every one up nights, told a local Tea Party group about his wicked smart idea.

I've made a suggestion that we should at least start talking about impeachment. I had my office staff do it. But we cannot find anything that permits the House to bring impeachment proceedings against Harry Reid. There's nothing in the legislation we can find at this point to force him to vote or come up with a budget or anything like that. His membership in the Senate can call for a vote of "no confidence," but we can't even get a Republican senator to do that.

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